High Court imposes ‘exemplary cost’ on government for filing misleading affidavit

Rajiv Sharma,an assistant engineer,had filed a petition,challenging the government decision to reserve one of the two posts of executive engineer which were to be filled by promotion for scheduled castes. He said that while quota for scheduled castes was 21 per cent,the government had wrongly rejected his representation in the matter.

In its affidavit,the government informed the court that one of the two posts in question was reserved for scheduled castes.

However,later the government filed another affidavit,stating that the posts belonged to a common cadre of 23 executive engineers,town planners,associate planners,and architect planners.

The judges said that from the rules,it is clear the posts of executive engineer were a separate and independent cadre.

They observed that the state had changed its stand in an arbitrary manner.

Since there were only two posts of the cadre of executive engineer,one of these could not be filled up by reservation from scheduled caste candidates,said the court.

“The affidavit filed on behalf of the state seems to be false and against its own record. The state authority has tried to conceal material facts while filing supplementary counter affidavit. The writ petition deserves exemplary costs,” said the court.

Stating that “such action on the part of the state government/authority is deprecated”,the court directed the government to hold fresh selection to fill the post of executive engineer “in accordance with the rules”,and keeping in view the observations made in the judgement,within two months.